In the heated early afternoon on Memorial Day, the ferris wheel sat empty and unmanned at Freedom Weekend Aloft.

The festival was still open but a few venders packed their wares and headed for the exits. Nearby on the midway, a ride operator stood alone next to his broken ride.

That evening, inside the concert amphitheater, a beach band entertained a few dozen festival-goers while a couple hundred attendees waited in vain for hot-air balloons to take flight as the threat of a storm approached.

Once, the festival was considered the premier balloon event in the Eastern United States. It drew crowds 200,000 strong and sent nearly 200 balloons into the skies above Greenville's former Donaldson Center.

But air has been seeping out of the festival for years, and this year Aloft deflated.

An analysis by The Greenville News of Freedom Weekend Aloft's tax records shows the festival has been bleeding money since it moved to Simpsonville from Anderson in 2007.

The festival lost money each year it was held in Simpsonville. In 2007, its best revenue year since it moved to Simpsonville, it lost $147,000. The next year it lost $281,000.

Aloft's assets dwindled from $465,000 when it moved to Simpsonville to less than $5,000 after the 2013 event.

Now, its leaders say 2014 was the final festival and Aloft Inc. is in the process of filing for bankruptcy.

Vendors say they haven't been paid, and the city of Simpsonville, which hosted the event at Heritage Park, says it's owed at least $52,000 in rent after the festival failed to pay the balance it owes from 2013 and 2014.

So what led to the festival's decline into bankruptcy?

Some point to location changes from Greenville to Anderson and then Simpsonville. Others say it shouldn't have moved from the July 4 week.

Nationally known musicians were replaced by lesser-known regional draws, while organizers hiked ticket prices from $10 to $20 per person over the past three years.

Crowds declined and the festival's financial losses widened.

During the festival this year, balloonists could sense the end was near.

"I definitely noticed it this year," said Tom Lattin, who's flown a RE/MAX balloon for 22 years at Aloft. "I know the costs go up to run balloon rallies and if you look at the cost going up to get in, at some point there's a tipping point."

The festival's executive director, Cindy Nelson, said lawyers had advised her not to speak about the event and directed questions to Skinner Law Firm.

A representative of Skinner Law Firm said the Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing was in process and it wouldn't comment for 30 days.

Residents still recall the festival's early years with fondness while balloonists hope another event can replace Aloft to let balloons soar en masse over Greenville once more.

Early years

The year was 1981, the setting: Greenville. A film company representative from Shelby, N.C., sat down over coffee with Duane Clark, a hot-air balloonist from Greenville, and pitched an idea to film a 3-D feature movie using hundreds of hot-air balloons as the backdrop.

They needed a place to film and an incentive to gather balloonists from across the East Coast, and so they decided to start a festival.

They would hold it over the July 4 weekend and they would call it Freedom Weekend Aloft.

From those beginnings blossomed a festival that spanned 33 years and became a summertime staple for thousands of residents who came to see the spectacle of 100-plus balloons lift off into the evening sky and listen to the music of legends like Smokey Robinson and Hall & Oates.

The feature film titled "Hot Heir" and directed by Worth Keeter never made it to Greenville theater screens, but it was released in 1984 and some locals saw the film about a rich man who used hot-air balloons as an escape vehicle.

The festival stuck, though, and the balloonists and crowds returned year after year to spend four days sweating along the brutally hot, treeless, airstrip.

Folks hauled coolers, lawn chairs, blankets and grills to Donaldson. They paid by the carload in the early years and set up umbrellas to shield the sun's rays and often used the same umbrellas to shield themselves from frequent thunderstorms that gave the festival an alternate nickname, Freedom Weekend Afloat.

"It was hot, hot, hot, hot," said Deane Hines, a nurse who volunteered at the festival every year since 1984. "In front of the medical trailer every year we would set up a sprinkler so the kids could come and play in the water there because it was so hot."

But crowds kept coming, about 200,000 a year, to watch the balloons glow on the airstrip or watch them take off all at once into the sky.

In 1996, the festival moved from July 4 to Memorial Day to give a stable weekend date and to avoid some of the midsummer heat and thunderstorms.

As Donaldson expanded and industries moved in, it became clear that the festival needed to find a new home.

"When we had to leave Donaldson, we were very sad because we didn't want to leave Donaldson, but because of the air traffic with Lockheed, (Martin) we had to," Hines said. "We couldn't have planes flying in with balloons going up."

It found a home in Anderson, and remained there from 1999-2006. Away from the Greenville limelight and with less of a focus on balloon competitions, the numbers of balloonists dwindled, some years as low as 25, and crowds slowed, Clark said.

The festival wanted to move back toward Greenville's metro at the same time Simpsonville began to market its new Heritage Park for events.

In 2007, the festival moved to Simpsonville. Balloonists returned to new launch fields Simpsonville built to host the event. The city built an amphitheater to host concerts for the festival.

Crowds returned — 170,000 in 2007 and 185,000 in 2008 — but thunderstorms nearly wiped out the 2010 event, balloons never left the launch field and the revenues never really recovered.

"We were in water almost up to our knees. We were trying to save the vendors, get them up out of the water," Hines said. "We totally were rained out and we totally had to pay the bands that came in and we had to pay everybody that year even though we did not make any money."

"That was the year that really started the demise of Freedom Weekend," she said.

The event tried to play catch-up but couldn't turn the corner. It raised tickets from $10 to $15 but included concerts in the price. Then it raised them again this year to $20 but included rides in the admission price. Parking was another $5.

Clark said you couldn't blame weather for Aloft's demise.

"There's balloon events all over the country where you have a year or two of bad weather and then five years of great weather," he said. "You can't really say the weather killed the event because that's not, most of the time, the case if the event's run well."

He said the festival turned the main attraction — hot air balloons — into a sideshow by adding concerts and then restaurant vendors that ran costs higher.

Replacement event?

Clark said balloonists from across the Southeast have already started to discuss holding a smaller, balloon-focused event without the frills of Aloft.

"I'm definitely going to look into that as something we put on as balloonists, for balloonists, for the community," Clark said.

Volunteers and organizers were heartbroken that Aloft went bankrupt, Hines said. She organized the 300-volunteer crew this year and said many tears were shed when Aloft's board decided to close the festival.

"I would like to think that we could get something up off that ground that is more like Donaldson," she said.

Jim and Peggy Taylor of Greenville, and a sparse crowd, don't let the steady rain get in the way of Freedon Weekend Aloft as they listen to the Sensible Pumps rock group at the festival. July 4, 1988. The Greenville News